West London builders merchant Lords took up a unique opportunity to impress its name on millions of potential customers when it was invited to take a prime banner site on the Lord's cricket ground for the second Ashes test match in June.
The match, which England won, and the banner were seen not only by those at the ground but also by all those watching Sky Sports' television coverage.

Lords' marketing manager, John Welch, told diyweek.net that being asked by the most famous cricket club in the world to take an ad was something of a coup.

"We did have to pay for the banner but we did negotiate a very reasonable price, which made it worth our while, and although the contact was through our CEO it may well have been opportunistic because of the name!"

Lords has been established now for over 20 years. "We're not one of the bigger builders merchants but we are independent, are expanding and do have currently a small number of sites in London including a 2.5 acre site in Park Royal and a 2 acre site in Hayes, which we acquired earlier this year," Mr Welch went on.

"With that in mind we have over the past year been actively involved in promoting our brand by revising our corporate identity and by taken a more proactive marketing approach, allowing for the fact that we have to cut our cloth accordingly as we obviously do not have the spending power of the big boys.

"What we have used fairly recently are poster sites in key areas, bus backs, Adnozzles, Polish radio, revised the website, emailings, have open days and golf days, etc - anything we can do to keep Lords in our target market's eye."